After the commercial whaling moratorium was enacted in 1986, whale watching became one of the fastest growing tourism industries worldwide. As whaling was regarded as an activity that is incompatible with whale watching, the possible resumption of commercial whaling caused an urgent need to...

The purpose of this paper is to employ the quantile regression methodology to investigate the relationship between government size and economic growth using a panel data set for 24 OECD countries. We find that the magnitude of the effect of government size on economic growth varies through the...

The causal relationships between energy consumption and economic growth have given rise to much discussion but remain controversial. Alternative data sets based on different time spans, countries, energy policies and econometric approaches result in diverse outcomes. A meta analysis using a...

International prices of most staple food commodities in 2008 reached a remarkable level that had not been seen since late 1970’s. Food commodity prices are projected to remain on higher levels over the next decade, supported by firm demand, unfavorable weather conditions, slowing growth in...

This paper intends to estimate tbe potential impact of climate change on Taiwan's agricultural sector. Yield response regression models are used to investigate the climate change's impact on 60 crops. A price-endogenous mathematical programming model is tben used to simulate tbe welfare impacts...

The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive efficiency measures to estimate the performances of OECD and non-OECD countries. A Russell directional distance function that appropriately credits the decision making unit not only for increase in desirable outputs but also for the...

Levying a carbon tax is one of the approaches used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGEs) and has been adopted in a number of countries since the Kyoto Protocol. Applying such an approach in the forest sector may have important policy implications. The main purpose of this paper is to...

The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in 1997 has resulted in significant losses to Taiwan's hog industry which was the most important industry in Taiwan's agricultural sector at that time. Hog farmers have suffered great losses due to the cost of slaughtering infected hogs and reduced...

Climate is the primary determinant of agricultural productivity. In many parts of the world, including the United States, one can trace much of the year-to-year variations in climate to the El Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomenon. In 1997-98 the world experienced a severe El event and this is...

Agriculture operates in an uncertain environment. Yields, prices, and resource usage can change dramatically from year to year. However, most analyses of the agricultural sector, at least those using mathematical programming methods, assume decision making is based on average yields, ignoring...